


Goodbye, Goodbye

by kittyohcat



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Cancer, Death, I'm Sorry, M/M, coran is only mentioned, implied Texan Keith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 06:18:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9707348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittyohcat/pseuds/kittyohcat
Summary: Keith sat in the window seat, cushions old and faded and the window panes open to the downpour outside. His knees were drawn up to his chest and he had wrapped himself in Lance's favorite sweater. It was old and worn through in places and Lance would wear it on Sundays and say “It's my holey sweater!” and give him the stupidest endearing grin and goddamn finger guns. It still smelled like him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I've noticed that I write a lot angst (sorry 'bout that). I'm not totally satisfied with the ending, but I'm tired of messing with it for now. The title it based off of All Is Well (Goodbye, Goodbye) by Radical Face. I recommend giving it a listen. Anyway, hope you enjoy!

Keith sat in the window seat, cushions old and faded and the window panes open to the downpour outside. His knees were drawn up to his chest and he had wrapped himself in Lance's favorite sweater. It was old and worn through in places and Lance would wear it on Sundays and say _“It's my holey sweater!”_ and give him the stupidest endearing grin and goddamn finger guns. It still smelled like him.

 

Rain blew in through the window with a cold wind, but Keith didn't move to close it. It hadn't stopped raining since Lance had died, as if the sun and blue sky had gone with him, only shining a single, weak and lonely ray as he had left the funeral where Lance's mom had silently offered him the seat next to her. She had pulled him into her side when he hadn't realized he was crying, arm warm around his shoulders, and Lance's older sister had squeezed his hand tightly, silent tears rolling down her own face.

 

It had been almost two years ago, only six months into their relationship, that Lance had been diagnosed with cancer. What should have been a routine visit had turned into a nightmare, with the doctors stressing in the consecutive visits that for him it would not be a matter of when he was cured, or even if. They had found it too late and it would only be a matter of when the cancer took him.

 

After that particular appointment, he had pulled Keith aside, face serious and dark (he decided then that serious didn't suit Lance), and told him they should break up, that he wouldn't put Keith through the pain of watching him die.

 

Keith had punched him hard in the shoulder and called him an idiot. They had danced around their feelings for nearly three years and he hadn't been about to let Lance go. Lance had smiled in response, looking relieved, but it felt wrong. It felt sad. Keith decided it suited him even less. _“What ever you say, cowboy,”_ he had said.

 

The first year had been easy. Too easy, Keith had thought. Lance only need medicine to manage the pain and kept his job at the zoo maintaining the big cat habitats. He still went out with friends, still helped his mother with the garden, still did everything he had done for years. It felt normal, except for the little orange bottles in the medicine cabinet that taunted Keith every time he opened it to get the toothpaste, as if to say _nothing is normal and won't ever be again and you know that._ After two weeks, he had started leaving the toothpaste on the sink.

 

The beginning of the second year had been just as easy, just as deceptively normal. And then it wasn't. Everything went downhill about a year and half after the diagnosis. Lance was rapidly growing weaker, his skin sallowing, body tired. He had quit his job and spent most of his days in bed, only leaving to bathe and use the bathroom. Eventually he hadn't even been able to do that and Keith left his own job to take care of him ( _“Not quitting, going on leave,”_ Coran had corrected him).

 

(Lance had decided he didn't want to spend his time in the hospital and Keith had agreed. He wanted to remember Lance as _Lance_ , in their patchwork apartment and the way he smelled of sunshine and hot cocoa and sea salt, not a pale thing in a white robe, white bed, white room that carried the cloying sickly sweet smell of disinfectant and dying.)

 

But now Lance was gone and it was over and maybe he wasn't in pain anymore but the hole he left in Keith's chest ached. He tried to soothe it with the old sweater that smelled like Lance, but the smell was fading and he knew before long it would be gone. He tried to remember Lance's face, as he had been, when they had first met. Sun kissed skin, white teeth in a wide smile, and mischievous blue eyes, but that was fading too, as it had in real life, to be replaced with pale, sweaty skin and dulling eyes.

 

Suddenly, the apartment felt too quiet, too dead. There was no Lance laughing or singing terribly along with the radio or snoring. It felt empty. Even with Lance's things everywhere—keys on the table by the door, favorite mug on the drying rack next to the sink, jacket thrown over the back of couch—it felt too empty. He couldn't stand it, not after Lance had filled the entire place with his presence.

 

And so Keith left the window seat for the bedroom, where the blankets still hung off the bed from when they had taken Lance's body and the dirty laundry still laid piled by the door, and pulled out an old duffle bag, stuffing it with clothes.

 

Slipping on his boots, he paused, looking at Lance's jacket. Gingerly, he pulled it on, letting the weight of it settle over him, warm and comforting like sunshine and cocoa and salt.

 

At the door, he dropped his apartment keys next to Lance's and locked the door from the inside. He wouldn't look back. He didn't want to remember a cold, empty apartment where it had once been warm and full of love. He wanted to remember Lance, not the pale, skinny man that had died in their bed.

 

So he left it all behind. The cold apartment, the pitying look on his friends' faces, the freshly dug grave and polished headstone for someone far too young. The only thing that could keep him there was gone and so he left, letting the rain swallow him.

 


End file.
